NZ unveils an anti-scam fizzer, again
Saturday, 2 August 2025
Janine Starks is the author of www.moneytips.nz and can be contacted at moneytips.nz@gmail.com.
OPINION: Have a stab at the amount of money Scott Simpson, our Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister, agreed to put into setting up the new anti-scam alliance? You guessed it; zero dollars.
How do I know that? Well firstly an industry insider confirmed it, but secondly, it was pretty obvious. When the Government announces a new initiative, they sure as heck shout about it and tell us how much they’re “investing”. There wasn’t much shouting going on about this one.
The announcement of New Zealand’s anti-scam centre fizzled like a wet firework. In fact, the entire thing is so poorly structured, it’s a national embarrassment in my view.
Now guess how much money the Australian government invested in an anti-scam centre? The answer is an impressive $64 million, out of almost $200m the Albanese government allocated to scam initiatives.
The objective of a scam centre is to force banks, telcos, digital platforms, government agencies, the police and consumer organisations to work together to share information – in as close to real-time as possible. The buzzwords are detect, disrupt and respond to scams.
Our “centre” fails in its description. It’s got no centre. There’s no chief executive, no centralised staff and no budget. It’s just a fragmented list of businesses divvying up roles, controlling their own standards and time lines, and jollying along the others.
The only corks which popped on the day of the announcement would have been inside the companies who are part of the alliance. They’ve escaped all regulation, dodged any form of fine and ensured there’s no way a consumer can enforce any reimbursement. The real glory comes from an entirely voluntary agreement.
When they break their own standards and fail to invest in enough technology to detect and disrupt scams, all we will get is “whoops”. I’d say the lobbyists earned their bonus this year.
We are also missing some key companies in the alliance – where is TradeMe, Paypal and companies like iPromise, who all have methods to reduce purchase scams and need to have their benefits included in the education feature? Where are TSB, SBS and the other 20 registered banks? If you’re not in the alliance you’ll become a target for scammers.
Unlike the Australian version, which has an act of parliament, alongside fines of up to $55m enforced by the ACCC (the Aussie version of the Commerce Commission), Kiwis get no law, no fines and no money to run it.
If Scott Simpson didn’t want the government funding the scam alliance, he could have whacked a levy on each industry and used the money to set up a centralised, dedicated team which could lead, mandate deadlines and set codes.
Cheekily, Simpson only made a commitment to “explore” law changes to the Fair Trading and Privacy Acts that hinder the sharing of information. Read that again, because it’s actually a show stopper. If they don’t fix it, this alliance is a dead-duck.
Our banks already have the ability to reveal info under the Privacy Act, to stop a crime, but refuse to do so because it’s optional, forcing our police to use production orders. This has been confirmed by the Office for the Privacy Commissioner.
I don’t like every aspect of the new Australian scam system, but I’d rather have it than get lumped with our limp effort. My major gripe with the Aussie method is fines. Why line the pockets of the treasury when the money could go directly into consumer reimbursement schemes? Also, our Commerce Commission simply hasn’t been given the teeth of the Australian version.
How surprised would any of our banks be to have laws imposed and an industry scam centre that mirrored Australia. Given they’re all the same institutions, an alignment would hardly rattle boardroom cages.
Right now, there’s a political hot-potato with digital platforms such as Meta, where huge numbers of scams are advertised. Imposing anything against a US company is probably best side-stepped in the short term, but it doesn’t mean we can’t use levies to fund real-time technology and impose legal codes on banks and telcos.
Organisations like Google are showing a good level of engagement by setting up a verification system for financial advertisers. Meta can surely be required to match what other US platforms are doing.
New Zealand is infamous for protecting Aussie banks, allowing them to write their own scam code rules, maintain self-regulation and avoid liability in key areas such as receiving-bank scam liability.
The scam alliance is an extension of this soft approach alongside other disasters such as allowing banks to charge fees for open banking data, not designating the payment system and failing to mandate a real-time payments system, leaving us with world-last, antiquated technology and poor security.
This alliance stands in stark contrast to our Australian neighbours, as does our entire banking system.